Review Of This Weekend's Barron's (Dated 03 Oct)

Well, this weekend's edition (Cover Story: "Smart Cities") was not as interesting as some over the past few weeks.

Alan Abelson (the token bear) had it right in his first three sentences of his column: "If you crave excitemet, the stock market's just the place for you. Jump right in. The whirlpool's fine."

He goes on to mention the latest from The Levy Forecast (VERY bearish).

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Michael Santoli's lament of simpler times featured a quick note advising that Europe's mess helped drag down Morgan Stanley (ticker MS) 10% on Friday alone.

[R Mix note: Europe is VERY IMPORTANT to watch, they may lead California et al by just months...]

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Lowe's and Home Depot got nice mentions from Andrew Bary. Well, maybe for him, not for me.

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The almost always interesting "D.C. Current" column by Jim McTague discusses the sleazy accounting practices of Chinese listed companies here in the US and he wonders why the SEC and Justice Dept. are not cracking down. [my theory: there must still be good porn on the Internet for our .gov public servants]

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Leslie P. Norton writes a fairly interesting piece "Dawn of the Smart City" (the Cover Story). In which she describes various challenges facing cities here and abroad over the next 40 years. Perhaps the biggest challenge is to make the cities run better, greener and more efficiently. Any of you who have been to a place like Lima, Mexico City, Cairo, Karachi or, really. any big city in China or India can see the problems they have. Traffic, health care, pollution, infrastructure breakdowns, etc. She then lists companies likely to benefit from the spending that many of these cities are going to have to do to keep them livable:

ABB (ABB) smart grids
Accenture (ACN) developed NYC's "311" centralized customer service center
Cisco Systems (CSCO) wiring cities...
IBM (IBM) of course involved in many BIG projects
Johnson Controls (JCI) They make sensors; a big player in building effiency
Microsoft (MSFT) runs computing clouds for cities
Oracle (ORCL) like IBM, they are involved in big projects, not just databases
SAP (SAP) similar to Oracle
Schneider Electric (SBGSY) grid management and building efficiency
Siemens ((SI) energy efficiency and grid mnanagement

also involved:

Honeywell (HON)
GE( GE)
Veolia ((VE)
Badger Meter (BMI)


[R Mix note: for some reason I am having trouble formatting the below, sorry]

(Elsewhere) I have seen (but no nothing about, really) that there seems to be a big push for "green" buildings, apparently there are many inefficiencies that could be eliminated with smarter buildings. <--- Might want to watch the whole "green buildings" space... -------------------- An article on HCA "losing" $15.8 billion, but, hey that's peanuts nowadays... -------------------- "Technology Week" columnist Tiernan Ray informs us some more about FACEBOOK, no they do not have 600 million users, nor 700 million, it is now 800 million... He expects big things to be coming from Facebook (tablets, more services, etc.). He provided an interesting set of statistics. A survey claims that Facebook claims 16% of all people's time online... Google has 11% and Yahoo's various services 9%. Facebook DOES seem to be about to enter new terrain...


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In the Market Week section there was little new of interest to me. In the "Commodities Corner", columnist Matt Day says that Copper's Prospects Remain Solid, which is almost completely the opposite that I read from ZH and MISH. He says Chinese demand will push the price of copper right up, while ZeroHedge and Mike Shedlock are very dubious on the China growth story (at least in the the short term). [R Mix comment: MISH does a great job following China, globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com]


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Verdict: Hey, it's Sunday already, save your $5.00 unless something here rang your bell. YAWN...